4 Sport and Life. 



there a whole raft of firewood, dry and handy, if you please, to 

 yours respectfully." 



Such were the sufficiently commonplace incidents of my first 

 glimpse of the Pacific Slope. Bordered on the one side by the 

 Continental watershed formed by the Rocky Mountains, on the top 

 of which we were standing, and on the other by the waters of the 

 Pacific, about 600 miles away, this strip of country is of great 

 length, for it extends from the frontier of Mexico for three thousand 

 miles, up almost to the ice-bound Behring Sea, a land of which, in 

 the vernacular of the West, one speaks as the Pacific Slope, or : 

 "The Slope." 



On the occasion in question I was travelling solely for sport ; 

 two or three previous shooting expeditions to Central Wyoming and 

 Colorado, then still teeming with big game, had whetted my appe- 

 tite, and, experto crede, had taught me at least how not to do things 

 when arranging one's expedition, so as to obtain really good sport in 

 those matchless game countries, and to enjoy to the full the un- 

 tramelled freedom of the breezy West. I had bought my experience 

 at the cost of many dollars, and some wasted months, for a greener 

 " tender-foot " than I was had, I am convinced, never crossed the 

 famous old ferry over the Missouri, at Council Bluffs. 



There are several ways of " doing the West " ; the orthodox 

 manner, to-day still in use among the well-to-do " globe-trotting" 

 sportsmen, is at once the most expensive and the least satisfactory. 

 For a valet is a more than useless incumbrance when one's bed 

 consists of a couple of buffalo robes and a blanket, with one's saddle 

 as pillow, one's bathtub is the nearest creek"*, and one's articles of 



* Speaking of bathtubs reminds me of an amusing incident that once happened 



to a well-known English sportsman. Sir John , its hero, undertaking a 



shooting expedition to the Rockies, included in his vast camp equipage, to the 

 sore trial of his packers, even a tin bathtub. Sir John's English valet struck 

 the very morning the caravan was to pull out of Rawlins, and after some search 

 among the whisky saloon loafers, a man willing to undertake the duties was at 

 last found. One of his duties was to fill the baronet's bathtub every morning. 

 The first three mornings this was done, but on the fourth, the outfit being camped 

 close to a branch of the Platte, the valet suggested that a handy pool was close 



